,Photo courtesy of Sky Greens
Utilising green solutions, the world’s first commercial vertical farm opened in Lim Chu Kang on 24 October 2012, confirming that it is possible to find creative solutions in land-scarce Singapore.
Known as Sky Greens, the farm uses vertical-farming technology and houses 120 towers, each with 38 tiers of planting troughs. The troughs rotate around a 9-metre tall aluminium frame to ensure that plants receive uniform sunlight.
The first-of-its-kind greens are currently available exclusively at NTUC FairPrice Finest supermarkets.
“This allows us to further diversify our supply sources and at the same time offer our customers quality vegetables that are even fresher since locally grown vegetables require less transportation from farm to shelf,” said NTUC Fairprice Managing Director for Group Purchasing, Merchandising and International Trading Tng Ah Yiam.
Mr Tng added that NTUC Fairprice was impressed with the inventive solution and proud to collaborate with Sky Greens as they break new ground in commercial high-tech farming.
For now, Sky Greens produces three types of vegetables, but the range will continue to expand to include lettuce, kai lan and other vegetables in the future. Currently, about seven per cent of Singapore's vegetables are grown locally.
Despite costing 10 to 20 cents more than vegetables from other sources, the greens have received positive response from customers.
Sky Greens hopes to increase the number of towers and expand its current daily supply of vegetables to two tonnes by 2013.
